Dreaming of Space – Winner of the Moscow International Film Festival's Golden St. George (it was a home-job, since it beat Dear Wendy), Aleksei Uchitel's Space was a film that didn't really do too much for me, which is kind of strange since Uchitel introduced the film by saying the intention of his pictures is to create a reaction: Either strongly positive or strongly negative.  I totally defied him, but I still think his previous film, an anti-Russian Ark film called The Stroll, was pretty damn cool.

Like The Stroll, Uchitel fills Space with many long, uncut shots from a handheld camera.  I love that.  What I didn't really dig so much was the story, which involved a fairly happy-go-lucky cook named Horsey (Yevgeni Mironov, who reminded me a lot of Kevin Connolly) who befriends a mysterious, slightly Borat-looking dock worker named Gherman (The Stroll's Yevgeni Tsyganov).  Horsey's life kind of gets turned on its ear because of his puppy dog adoration of Gherman, even though he steals Horsey's girlfriend (Irina Pegova, also from The Stroll).  It's all set against the beginning of the space race, with the Soviet's launch of Sputnik.

Uchitel's film is gloomy, gritty and perpetually drizzling (kind of like Toronto today), so much so, I felt damp and cold by the time it ended.

Hostel – I didn't get much out of Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, which debuted here at the Festival's Midnight Madness program last year.  Apparently, the people who liked it saw something I didn't, because Roth's new picture (the version screened here is unfinished, though you couldn't tell one bit), the Quentin Tarantino-produced Hostel, is a gory, bloody, disgusting good time.

The premise doesn't make much sense at all, but that hardly affected my enjoyment.  Three young men, two American and one Icelandic, are traveling through Europe, staying at hostels in their unending search for pussy.  While in Amsterdam, they meet a Russian fellow who steers the trio towards an unbelievable hostel in Bratislava.  It is, allegedly, full of incredibly hot young women who go absolutely crazy for American men.  In no time, the guys are on a train to the remote town, and it's true: The girls there are all over them.  But then Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) disappears, leaving Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) with the time-tested decision to make: Do we look for our friend, or try to bang these chicks a few more times.

I don't want to say what happens, but it does involve a table full of sharp, rusty instruments and power tools, as well as a scene where some serious damage is inflicted on someone's Achille's tendon (that kills me).  Roth can do wonder with a budget, though his picture left me thinking what a female version of this hostel's paradise would be.

The Myth – The latest collaboration between Jackie Chan and writer/director/choreographer Stanley Tong is the typical chop-socky vehicle with a couple of exceptions: Chan doesn't have many chances to murder the English language (his lines are, mostly, Cantonese), and the story blends in aspects of a historical epic, complete with tons of extras, fancy costumes, remote locations, and a sweeping love story.  I could have done without the epic part, since that only made the film longer, and the scenes between the jaw-dropping punching and kicking even further apart.

Chan plays Jack, an archaeologist who wrote an article about the myth of a ancient ruler's casket that defies gravity by floating a few dozen feet in the air.  Jack's pal is a scientist whose next project is to conquer gravity.  They decide to crash the aforementioned tomb, setting off a chain of wacky events which happen to coincide with one of Jack's dreams about protecting a princess (Kim Hee-seon).

The princess gets to do all kinds of unusual stuff, like sewing up one of Jack's wounds with her own hair, and eating snow and then spitting it into his mouth (is there where the term "snowballing" comes from?), and Chan, as always, will knock your socks off with his fight scenes.  The highlight took place on a conveyor belt in a factory that produced those sticky strips you put on the floor to catch mice.  One word: Amazing.

SPL – Warning: This does not have anything to do with Scottish Premiere League soccer.  Donnie Yen, who also appears in the Festival's Seven Swords (which, at 150 minutes, I couldn't cram into my schedule), is the heart and soul of this Wilson Yip Hong Kong cop drama, even though he doesn't appear for the first third of the picture.  He plays Inspector Ma, who is taking over a small department from a predecessor dying from a brain tumor (Simon Yam) but hell-bent on putting away a crime lord played by the barrel-shaped Sammo Hung.

It's all pretty melodramatic stuff (accentuated by over-the-top music and lingering shots), at least until the serious ass-kicking comes in the final ten minutes.  It's nice when it finally arrives, though nothing matches The Myth's mouse trap scene.  On top of that, there's a strange daddy complex running through each of the film's characters.  Interesting, sure, but the idea never really pays off like I thought it would.  And then there's Yam's character, who we like, then hate, then like, then hate again, and then (I think) like at the end.  Very uneven.